Sign petition to support Ethnic Studies and preserve relevant education!

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

October 11, 2010

Press contacts: 
Steve Woo, UCB, 2007, woo.stephan@gmail.com

Liz Del Sol, UCB 1972, lizdelsol@gmail.com

ASIAN AMERICAN STUDIES AT UC BERKELEY ON THE CHOPPING 
BLOCK. CHANCELLOR’S OFFICE PRESSING TO DISSOLVE ASIAN
 AMERICAN, CHICANO, AND NATIVE-AMERICAN STUDIES MAJORS
 INTO ONE ETHNIC STUDIES MAJOR.

Berkeley Asian American Pacific Islander (AAPI) Alumni Chapter calls on the Chancellor to
stop the cutbacks. Hands off the existing Ethnic Studies Majors. We support the right to
relevant education for all communities and people. 
After decades of University-led attacks on the Department of Ethnic Studies at UC Berkeley, the 
Chancellor’s office, led by Executive Vice Chancellor, George Breslauer, and Vice Provost, 
Catherine Koshland, are extending the assault, this time in an effort to discontinue Asian
American, Chicano, and Native American Studies undergraduate majors. The Chancellor’s 
Office is currently pressing these three programs to consolidate under one Ethnic Studies major, 
thereby eliminating the ability for students to independently major or minor in ethnic specific 
fields.


We view this action as an effort to reduce the infrastructure of the Ethnic Studies Department, 
which has had a tenuous relationship with the University ever since its creation out of the 1969 
Third World Liberation Front (TWLF) strike, a student-led movement to create relevant 
programs for communities of color. We further view the Chancellor’s efforts as an attempt to
weaken the Ethnic Studies program at UC Berkeley, one of the University’s few forms of 
community-based education led by and about peoples of color.

The Chancellor’s Office claims that an external review team, appointed to examine the structure
and governance of the Department, recommended the closure of these three majors. However,
we find the external review team’s recommendations to be imprecise about its solutions and is
open to interpretation. The Chancellor’s Office has decided to loosely interpret the
recommendations made in order to serve the University’s decades-long agenda of diminishing
the Department of Ethnic Studies.


Historically, these studies focused upon community
needs and other concerns that have been erased or long neglected. The programs need increased
support and reaffirmation, not closure.


The Berkeley AAPI Alumni Chapter calls on the Chancellor’s Office to:


1. Respect the autonomy of the Asian American Studies, Chicano Studies, and Native
American Studies programs


2. Retract its demands to close the Asian American Studies, Chicano Studies, and Native
American Studies major programs


3. Increase its commitment to a vital and growing department by immediately providing
adequate resources such as teaching space and funding for more full-time employees and
teaching staff.

  The Berkeley Asian American Pacific Islander (AAPI) Alumni Chapter is composed of a significant number of graduates of the University of California, Berkeley active in the Asian American Pacific Islander community today.

Join the Berkeley AAPI Alumni Chapter facebook group

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